If the story of Christ's life were true, we should not expect to
find that nearly all the principal events of that life had previously
happened in the lives of some earlier god or gods, long since
acknowledged to be mythical.
If the Gospel record were the _only_ record of a god coming upon earth,
of a god born of a virgin, of a god slain by men, that record would seem
to us more plausible than it will seem if we discover proof that other
and earlier gods have been fabled to have come on earth, to have been
born of virgins, to have lived and taught on earth, and to have been
slain by men.
Because, if the events related in the life of Christ have been
previously related as parts of the lives of earlier mythical gods, we
find ourselves confronted by the possibilities that what is mythical
in one narrative may be mythical in another; that if one god is a myth
another god may be a myth; that if 400,000,000 of Buddhists have been
deluded, 200,000,000 of Christians may be deluded; that if the events
of Christ's life were alleged to have happened before to another person,
they may have been adopted from the older story, and made features of
the new.
If Christ was God--the omnipotent, eternal, and _only_ God--come on
earth, He would not be likely to repeat acts, to re-act the adventures
of earlier and spurious gods; nor would His divine teachings be mere
shreds and patches made up of quotations, paraphrases, and repetitions
of earlier teachings, uttered by mere mortals, or mere myths.
What are we to think, then when we find that there are hardly any events
in the life of Christ which were not, before His birth, attributed to
mythical gods; that there are hardly any acts of Christ's which may not
be paralleled by acts attributed to mythical gods before His advent;
that there are hardly any important thoughts attributed to Christ which
had not been uttered by other men, or by mythical gods, in earlier
times? What _are_ we to think if the facts be thus?
Mr. Parsons, in _Our Sun God_, quotes the following passage from a Latin
work by St. Augustine:
Again, in that I said, "This is in our time the Christian
religion, which to know and also follow is most sure and
certain salvation," it is affirmed in regard to this name,
not in regard to the sacred thing itself to which the name
belongs. For the sacred thing which is now called the
Christian religion existed in ancient times, nor, indeed,
was it absent from the beginning of the human race until
the Christ Himself came in the flesh, whence the true religion
which already existed came to be called "the Christian." So
when, after His resurrection and ascension to heaven, the
Apostles began to preach and many believed, it is thus written,
"The followers were first called Christians at Antioch."
Therefore I said, "This is in our time the Christian religion,"
not because it did not exist in earlier times, but as having
in later times received this particular name.
From Eusebius, the great Christian historian, Mr. Parsons, quotes as
follows:
What is called the Christian religion is neither new nor
strange, but--_if it be lawful to testify as to the truth_--
was known to the ancients.
Mr. Arthur Lillie, in _Buddha and Buddhism_, quotes M. Burnouf as
saying:
History and comparative mythology are teaching every day
more plainly that creeds grow slowly up. None came into the
world ready-made, and as if by magic. The origin of events
is lost in the infinite. A great Indian poet has said: "The
beginning of things evades us; their end evades us also; we
see only the middle."
Before Darwin's day it was considered absurd and impious to talk of
"pre-Adamite man," and it will still, by many, be held absurd and
impious to talk of "Christianity before Christ."
And yet the incidents of the life and death of Christ, the teachings of
Christ and His Apostles, and the rites and mysteries of the Christian
Church can all be paralleled by similar incidents, ethics, and
ceremonies embodied in religions long anterior to the birth of Jesus.
Christ is said to have been God come down upon the earth. The idea of a
god coming down upon the earth was quite an old and popular idea at the
time when the Gospels were written. In the Old Testament God makes many
visits to the earth; and the instances in the Greek, Roman, and Egyptian
mythologies of gods coming amongst men and taking part in human affairs
are well known.
Christ is said to have been the Son of God. But the idea of a son-god is
very much older than the Christian religion.
Christ is said to have been a redeemer, and to have descended from a
line of kings. But the idea of a king's son as a redeemer is very much
older than the Christian religion.
Christ is said to have been born of a virgin. But many heroes before Him
were declared to have been born of virgins.
Christ is said to have been born in a cave or stable while His parents
were on a journey. But this also was an old legend long before the
Christian religion.
Christ is said to have been crucified. But very many kings, kings' sons,
son-gods, and heroes had been crucified ages before Him.
Christ is said to have been a sacrifice offered up for the salvation
of man. But thousands and thousands of men before Him had been slain
as sacrifices for the general good, or as atonements for general or
particular sins.
Christ is said to have risen from the dead. But that had been said of
other gods before Him.
Christ is said to have ascended into Heaven. But this also was a very
old idea.
Christ is said to have worked miracles. But all the gods and saints of
all the older religions were said to have worked miracles.
Christ is said to have brought to men, direct from Heaven, a new message
of salvation. But the message He brought was in nowise new.
Christ is said to have preached a new ethic of mercy and peace and
good-will to all men. But this ethic had been preached centuries before
His supposed advent.
The Christians changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. Sun-day is
the day of the Sun God.
Christ's birthday was fixed on the 25th of December. But the 25th of
December is the day of the Winter solstice--the birthday, of Apollo, the
Sun God--and had been from time immemorial the birthday of the sun gods
in all religions. The Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Phoenicians, and
Teutonic races all kept the 25th of December as the birthday of the Sun
God.
The Christians departed from the monotheism of the Jews, and made their
God a Trinity. The Buddhists and the Egyptians had Holy Trinities long
before. But whereas the Christian Trinity is unreasonable, the older
idea of the Trinity was based upon a perfectly lucid and natural
conception.
Christ is supposed by many to have first laid down the Golden Rule, "Do
unto others as you would that they should do unto you." But the Golden
Rule was laid down centuries before the Christian era.
Two of the most important of the utterances attributed to Christ are
the Lord's Prayer and the Sermon on the Mount. But there is very strong
evidence that the Lord's Prayer was used before Christ's time, and still
stronger evidence that the Sermon on the Mount was a compilation, and
was never uttered by Christ or any other preacher in the form in which
it is given by St. Matthew.
Christ is said to have been tempted of the Devil. But apart from
the utter absurdity of the Devil's tempting God by offering Him the
sovereignty of the earth--when God had already the sovereignty of twenty
millions of suns--it is related of Buddha that he also was tempted of
the Devil centuries before Christ was born.
The idea that one man should die as a sacrifice to the gods on behalf
of many, the idea that the god should be slain for the good of men,
the idea that the blood of the human or animal "scapegoat" had power to
purify or to save, the idea that a king or a king's son should expiate
the sins of a tribe by his death, and the idea that a god should offer
himself as a sacrifice to himself in atonement for the sins of his
people--all these were old ideas, and ideas well known to the founders
of Christianity.
The resemblances of the legendary lives of Christ and Buddha are
surprising: so also are the resemblances of forms and ethics of the
ancient Buddhists and the early Christians.
Mr. Arthur Lillie, in _Buddha and Buddhism_, makes the following
quotation from M. Leon de Rosny:
The astonishing points of contact between the popular legend
of Buddha and that of Christ, the almost absolute similarity
of the moral lessons given to the world between these two
peerless teachers of the human race, the striking affinities
between the customs of the Buddhists and the Essenes, of whom
Christ must have been a disciple, suggest at once an Indian
origin to Primitive Christianity.
Mr. Lillie goes on to say that there was a sect of Essenes in Palestine
fifty years B.C., and that fifty years after the death of Christ there
existed in Palestine a similar sect, from whom Christianity was derived.
Mr. Lillie says of these sects:
Each had two prominent rites: baptism, and what Tertullian
calls the "oblation of bread." Each had for officers, deacons,
presbyters, ephemerents. Each sect had monks, nuns, celibacy,
community of goods. Each interpreted the Old Testament in a
mystical way--so mystical, in fact, that it enabled each to
discover that the bloody sacrifice of Mosaism was forbidden,
not enjoined. The most minute likenesses have been pointed
out between these two sects by all Catholic writers from
Eusebius to the poet Racine... Was there any connection
between these two sects? It is difficult to conceive that
there can be two answers to such a question.
The resemblances between Buddhism and Christianity were accounted for by
the Christian Fathers very simply. The Buddhists had been instructed by
the Devil, and there was no more to be said. Later Christian scholars
face the difficulty by declaring that the Buddhists copied from the
Christians.
Reminded that Buddha lived five hundred years before Christ, and that
the Buddhist religion was in its prime two hundred years before Christ,
the Christian apologist replies that, for all that, the Buddhist
Scriptures are of comparatively late date. Let us see how the matter
stands.
The resemblances of the two religions are of two kinds. There is, first,
the resemblance between the Christian life of Christ and the Indian life
of Buddha; and there is, secondly, the resemblance between the moral
teachings of Christ and Buddha.
Now, if the Indian Scriptures _are_ of later date than the Gospels, it
is just possible that the Buddhists may have copied incidents from the
life of Christ.
But it is perfectly certain that the change of borrowing cannot be
brought against Augustus Caesar, Plato, and the compilers of the
mythologies of Egypt and Greece and Rome. And it is as certain that
the Christians did borrow from the Jews as that the Jews borrowed from
Babylon. But a little while ago all Christendom would have denied the
indebtedness of Moses to King Sargon.
Now, since the Christian ideas were anticipated by the Babylonians, the
Egyptians, the Romans, and the Greeks, why should we suppose that
they were copied by the Buddhists, whose religion was triumphant some
centuries before Christ?
And, again, while there is no reason to suppose that Christian
missionaries in the early centuries of the era made any appreciable
impression on India or China, there is good reason to suppose that the
Buddhists, who were the first and most successful of all missionaries,
reached Egypt and Persia and Palestine, and made their influence felt.
I now turn to the statement of M. Burnouf, quoted by Mr. Lillie. M.
Burnouf asserts that the Indian origin of Christianity is no longer
contested:
It has been placed in full light by the researches of scholars,
and notably English scholars, and by the publication of the
original texts... In point of fact, for a long time folks had
been struck with the resemblances--or, rather, the identical
elements--contained in Christianity and Buddhism. Writers
of the firmest faith and most sincere piety have admitted them.
In the last century these analogies were set down to the
Nestorians; but since then the science of Oriental chronology
has come into being, and proved that Buddha is many years
anterior to Nestorius and Jesus. Thus the Nestorian theory
had to be given up. But a thing may be posterior to another
without proving derivation. So the problem remained unsolved
until recently, when the pathway that Buddhism followed was
traced step by step from India to Jerusalem.
There was baptism before Christ, and before John the Baptist. There were
gods, man-gods, son-gods, and saviours before Christ. There were Bibles,
hymns, temples, monasteries, priests, monks, missionaries, crosses,
sacraments, and mysteries before Christ.
Perhaps the most important sacrament of the Christian religion to-day is
the Eucharist, or Lord's Supper. But this idea of the Eucharist, or the
ceremonial eating of the god, has its roots far back in the prehistoric
days of religious cannibalism. Prehistoric man believed that if he ate
anything its virtue passed into his physical system. Therefore he began
by devouring his gods, body and bones. Later, man mended his manners so
far as to substitute animal for human sacrifice; still later he employed
bread and wine as symbolical substitutes for flesh and blood. This is
the origin and evolution of the strange and, to many of us, repulsive
idea of eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ.
Now, supposing these facts to be as I have stated them above, to what
conclusion do they point?
Bear in mind the statement of M. Burnouf, that religions are built
up slowly by a process of adaptation; add that to the statements of
Eusebius, the great Christian historian, and of St. Augustine, the great
Christian Father, that the Christian religion is no new thing, but was
known to the ancients, and does it not seem most reasonable to suppose
that Christianity is a religion founded on ancient myths and legends,
on ancient ethics, and on ancient allegorical mysteries and metaphysical
errors?
To support those statements with adequate evidence I should have to
compile a book four times as large as the present volume. As I have
not room to state the case properly, I shall content myself with the
recommendation of some books in which the reader may study the subject
for himself.
A list of these books I now subjoin:
_The Golden Bough._ Frazer. Macmillan & Co.
_A Short History of Christianity._ Robertson. Watts & Co.
_The Evolution of the Idea of God._ Grant Allen. Rationalist
Press Association. _Buddha and Buddhism._ Lillie. Clark.
_Our Sun God._ Parsons. Parsons.
_Christianity and Mythology._ Robertson. Watts & Co.
_Pagan Christs._ Robertson. Watts & Co.
_The Legend of Perseus._ Hartland. Nutt.
_The Birth of Jesus._ Soltau. Black.
The above are all scholarly and important books, and should be generally
known.
For reasons given above I claim, with regard to the divinity and
Resurrection of Jesus Christ:
That outside the New Testament there is no evidence of any
value to show that Christ ever lived, that He ever taught,
that He ever rose from the dead.
That the evidence of the New Testament is anonymous, is
contradictory, is loaded with myths and miracles.
That the Gospels do not contain a word of proof by any
eye-witness as to the fact that Christ was really dead;
nor the statement of any eye-witness that He was seen to
return to life and quit His tomb.
That Paul, who preached the Resurrection of Christ, did not
see Christ dead, did not see Him arise from the dead, did
not see Him ascend into Heaven.
That Paul nowhere supports the Gospel accounts of Christ's
life and teaching.
That the Gospels are of mixed and doubtful origin, that they
show signs of interpolation and tampering, and that they have
been selected from a number of other Gospels, all of which
were once accepted as genuine.
And that, while there is no real evidence of the life or the
teachings, or the Resurrection of Christ, there is a great
deal of evidence to show that the Gospels were founded upon
anterior legends and older ethics.
But Christian apologists offer other reasons why we should accept the
stories of the miraculous birth and Resurrection of Christ as true. Let
us examine these reasons, and see what they amount to.